Psalm 16:11 You will show me the path of life: in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures for ever more. volves: — Annihilation of man, or even of an atom, is unknown in God's universe; while the grave is the place in which is covered what would otherwise be painful, offensive, and injurious to survivors. We know life is uncertain; but we practically regard it as certain, at least for a few years. There is in all of us faith in a future life, and hope and desire that in that life our merciful Creator will perfect our nature, and confer upon us a painless and unbroken happiness. The immortality of our race is deeply interesting, but our individual immortality, and what it involves, should be to us a matter of practical and daily concern. There is a sense in which men discover their value in the scale of being. They learn that they have not only a body but a soul, that not only must the wants of the body be supplied, but the mind must be trained, and the soul kept under God's government, for its present health and future bliss. There are three states of man's reasoning mind which no instinct of the lower animals that we are acquainted with has ever suggested — 1. We have no evidence that any creature except man expects death; or has any knowledge of it. 2. The idea of a future life cannot be entertained by the horse or the elephant, by the ant or the bee. 3. As little capacity have they for the desire of it. The instincts of brutes concern their present wants; but man, by his superior endowment, ranges over the present and the future, over what is near and far distant, and by the high faculty of reason can awake to a consciousness of God, and of his own personal immortality. Christianity has given to man a familiarity with pure religion for the soul, for moral and holy discipline, and for appreciating his destiny, which none of the old philosophies had the power to give or to enforce.We are now assured by Jesus that we shall live forever, and, assuming this, it should involve hopes and duties in relation to ourselves and others of high and practical import. 1. It should involve sacred regard for our own life, and for that of others. The sacredness and value of our own life, and of that of others, should ever be a practical lesson inwrought daily with our very being, whether on the smallest or largest scale. Crime against the person cannot cease unless humanity is respected. There can be no respect for it where there are no just views of its dignity, worth, and moral and religious power; and the way to elevate it is not by depreciating and debasing it, nor by discouraging or damning it; but by loving efforts for its recovery, by purifying the sources of temptation to crime, etc. It also demands on our part sacred regard for the life of others. A hope of immortality also involves a sacred regard to our personal virtue, and to that of others. Whatever will purity our nature, control our passions, convince us of the evil and bitterness of sin, elevate our thoughts and affections, and help us onward in our Christian course, we should seek more perfectly to possess in the prospect of an immortal life. 2. If we had not the immortal life before us we should think of death as our end. In the prospect of our immortal life it must be wise, and every way worthy of us, to form the purest, most holy, and most just conceptions of the blessed God. But how can this personal immortality be assured? We have a soul; it implies immortality. The inequalities of the present state of man imply a sphere of readjustment. We desire immortality. The Bible declares it. These grounds of assurance with our individual consciousness, desire, and hope, are what men rest upon in relation to their immortality. It cannot be mathematically, philosophically, or logically demonstrated. (R. Ainslie.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. |
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